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The Present State of 

Historical Writing 

in America 



BY 

EDWARD CHANNING 



Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Societt 
FOB October, 1910 



WORCESTER. MASSACHUSETTS 

THE DAVIS PRESS 

1910 






IN EXCHAN«K 

lit 1 B l-'l* 



THE PRESENT STATE OF HISTORICAL 
WRITING IN AMERICA. 

BY EDWARD CHANNING. 

History is a mode of thought and expression. His- 
torical writing is the application of the historical method 
to expression with pen and ink. Historical labor finds 
its activities in many directions. It may be grouped 
under three heads: (1) the collecting and printing of 
original sources; (2) the reporting on masses of material 
or on specific topics; (3) historical writing. The first 
two of these groups represent craftsmanship; the third 
division represents art. It is necessary for the eluci- 
dation of the ages to gather documents into storehouses 
and to make them accessible by various modes of arrange- 
ment, by convenient calendars and lists of one kind 
or another. Some of this material is in printed books; 
another part is composed of original manuscripts. 
Between these two divisions is a series of limited dupli- 
cations by means of transcripts which are made by hand, 
or by the typewriter, or, in a more limited form, by 
photography. Of these the photograph is the best and, 
in view of the great improvements that are being made 
in photography, it might not be amiss to suggest that it 
would be well to postpone or to restrict the duphcation 
of manuscripts until the time comes when they can be 
reproduced by the camera. The task of making accessi- 
ble the tools of the historical writer is a necessary part 
of historical labor and those who engage in it deserve 
appreciation and recogmtion, — they are the altruists of 
the profession, in that they cut themselves off from the 
reputation-making forms of historical endeavor. 

The second class of historical labor presents itself 
to the mind under the words reports, theses, and doctoral 
dissertations. Hundreds and thousands of young men 
and old ones, as well as the middle-aged, all over the 
country are devoting themselves, with the greatest 
assiduity, to the making of extracts and abstracts of 
original sources, arranging them under appropriate 



headings, and translating them into twentieth century 
English, as ordinarily used in .\menca These mono- 
graphs, reports, and dissertations, thus laboriously com- 
piled, are issued in the printed form by umversities, 
some of which do not confine themselves to the printing 
of works produced within their walls, but take what 
they can get; others are issued by learned societies under 
the names of transactions, pubhcations, proceedings 
or collections. Given an adequate amount of material 
and a sufficiency of time, he must be a mediocre nian 
indeed or one whose brain has become mdm-ated, who 
cannot produce a monograph or volume, or even a series 
of volumes of this type. 

Of recent years, the output of doctoral dissertations 
has greatly increased, owing in part to the establishment 
of a large number of fellowships which are ofteiitimes 
designated as being for research. The ultimate aim 
of nearly every one of the seekers for doctorates is to 
engage in the teaching of history in a university, a 
coUege, a normal school, or perchance, in a high school 
The importance of providing a constant stream of 
youthful, weU trained pedagogues is recogmzed by aU 
and justifies the founding and giving of scho arships 
and fellowships. But we should realize that the pro- 
duction of pedagogues is not the same thing as the brmging 
forth of scholars, much less is it the making of historical 
writers or historians. Professor Jameson has remarked 
upon the barrenness of our doctors. L too as a teacher 
o youth, a conductor of doctoral candidates, a guider 
in the eWution of theses, have become conscious o 
the pertinacity with which writers of essays and theses 
in our colleges and universities, whether they get doc- 
torardegree! or not, stop with the work they do und 
direction Get them out of the umversity, get them 
away ?rom professorial stimulus, make them teachers 
make them librarians, and their original work « ops^ It is 
the most heart-rending thing that university teachers o 
history have to face at the present time. As incitements 
to individualistic, original research, pecumary aid has 



not as yet proved effective. The man who is going to be 
a great seeker after truth and a fruitful setter-forth 
of the facts of human history to his fellowmen cannot 
be a recluse, living on the scanty bounty of fellowships 
as they have been and are administered by American 
universities. The historical seeker and writer must 
have interests that will compel him to come into con- 
tact with other hiunan beings. The names that occur 
to us of great historical writers, Gibbon, Macaulay, 
Trevelj^au, and Lecky in England, Bancroft, Parkman, 
Irving, Prescott, Motley, and Palfrey in America, are 
not those of closeted students, living on the bounties 
of others. They were all active in pursuits, other than 
those in which they won their fame. In saying this, 
I am referring solely to the production of writers of 
history. Scholarships and fellowships have their justi- 
fication in producing teachers, catalogue-makers and 
other craftsmen; but the artist is not to be thus made. 
The man who has it in hun to write a great book will 
do it and do it better if he has to earn his own living, 
and is thereby forced into contact with his fellowmen, 
even if he half starves in the midst of his career. 

The qualifications of the historian are multitudinous. 
He must have training in research, must be able to 
handle material in manuscript and in printed form, and 
to sift the truth from the falsehood. He must have 
the faculty of using the work of others, of recognizing 
first-class monographs at a glance, almost. The ma- 
terials of American history are so vast that the historian, 
even of a fairly limited period, can hardly hope himself 
to read all the original sources. He must use the work 
of others; but he himself must also constantly be using 
original materials; otherwise he will lose the faculty 
of recognition; and he will miss that local color and 
flavor which make historical writing tolerable. The 
task of the historical writer is on all fours with that of 
the person who works with colors, — the historian seeks 
to reproduce with the pen the impression his research 
and reading have made on his mind, as the artist seeks 



6 

to reproduce mental impressions with the brush. The 
task of the man who endeavors to state the truth in 
an attractive manner in words is far more difficult than 
that of the novelist or the poet. For the one is hampered 
in every line by the necessity of speaking the truth, 
the other is not. The task of the historian is construc- 
tive, by reproduction to place in public view the record 
of the bygone times. 

With the worker in colors, the novelist, and the poet, 
the historian must possess imagination. He must be 
able to picture to himself in broad outline, the condition 
of a people at a given time, to see the march of armies, 
to recognize the inter-action of economic forces, and 
then to reproduce these impressions with a lightness 
of touch that will make them readable and with a 
heaviness of detail that will make them convincing. 
In his presentation, he must seek to produce a truthful 
unpression upon his reader. Oftentunes, to do this he 
must sacrifice absolute accuracy in detail and in per- 
spective. If the unpression produced upon his reader 
is truthful, it matters little whether all his dates are 
correct, all his names are properly spelled, or if all 
his facts are accurate. Indeed, his dates may every 
one of them be correct, his names may all be properly 
spelled, his facts may be absolutely accurate, and the 
impression left upon his reader be entirely false. 

The historian must be a person of broad sympathies; 
to be an antiquarian is not enough. He must have some 
sympathy with the ways of the economist and must 
regard the march of fact in the fight of the laws of 
human development. Professor MacMaster has rightly 
termed the older historians "dramatic writers." They 
attributed the Revolution to the Adamses, to Washing- 
ton, to Henry, to Otis, and to the other great men of 
that epoch. Approaching the problem from a more 
modern standpoint, it becomes increasingly evident 
that the separation from England was largely due to 
the play of economic forces. At the same time, there is 
no such thing as economic history; all history is economic. 



All historical development is founded upon industry, 
upon the necessity of supporting life, and the way in 
which it is done. It is impossible to separate economic 
history from political history. None the less, the his- 
torian owes a debt of deepest gratitude to the economist 
for rescuing his subject from the abyss of dramatism. 
The historian must also have enough of training in 
law to be conscious of the way in which lawyers look 
at affairs. He must reahze the meaning of the word, 
of the phrase, "the law." It is true that the historian's 
business and the lawyer's business are very different. 
The qualities of the mind that make a successful his- 
torian are not those that make a successful lawyer; 
but lack of the feeling or the knowledge of how lawyers 
look at certain problems is fatal to the best historical 
production. Similarly, he must have some acquaint- 
ance with that which is termed science; he must under- 
stand the scientific temperament; and must know some- 
thing of the results of scientific inquiry. 

The historical writer must be a master of perspective ; 
he must see events and men in their true relations. He 
must not exalt one period unduly, or give too heavy a 
weight to one set of events; he must not dilate too much 
on the influence of men and omit to set forth with equal 
skill the influence of underlying forces. This is not 
saying that an historical writer cannot treat a limited 
period or a limited topic or that biography may not be 
one form of historical writing; but within his field, the 
historical writer must see the perspective truly. This 
is one of the most difficult of all aclaievements for the 
historian, because in his researches, he is likely to come 
upon new material relating to some one part of his studies 
that no one else has ever seen, or rather that no one 
else has ever understood. The temptation is great to 
apportion his space according to the importance of 
his materials, not according to the importance of the 
events or the men. 

The difference between the tasks of those whom I 
have termed historical craftsmen and those whom I 



8 

have called historical writers lies in the amount of think- 
ing necessary for the best production in their respective 
fields. The searching for documents, the copying of 
them accurately, the verifying of texts, and the seeing 
them accurately printed is a work that demands time, 
labor, and patience. The writing of reports or theses 
likewise demands prolonged labor in searching out 
facts, some skill in ascertaining the truth of them, and 
some facihty in putting them together. The object 
of these productions, however, is not so much to stim- 
ulate and interest large numbers of readers as to pro- 
vide accurate and painstaking statements of fact for 
the use of university professors and historical writers. 
It is not expected of the monographer that he shall be 
interesting or stimulating, he can be as dry and detailed 
as he pleases. The object of the historian is very 
different and his mode of procedure must be quite unlike 
that of the purveyor of transcripts, the editor of original 
documents, or the writer of monographs. 

The first thing that the historian must do, after he has 
looked over his field carefully, from one end to the other, 
and acquired some knowledge of relative values and 
perspective, is to familiarize himself with the facts. 
It is not enough for him to note down this, that, or the 
other on paper and then from these notes make up his 
text. He must pass all this matter through his brain; 
he must make it a part of himself. To accomplish this, 
he must become very familiar with his facts ; he must be 
saturated with detail. He must be on speaking terms, 
so to say, with the men and women who take any leading 
part in his story. He must know, not merely a critical 
year or so, in their lives, he must be acquainted with 
their enviromnent, with their upbringing, with their 
mental and moral qualities. In treating of economic 
problems, he cannot array a mass of facts on paper, he 
must make the facts part of himself; he must ponder 
them carefully, day after day, month after month, possibly 
year after year, until their true relation and interaction 
come to be revealed to him. It is only after this pro- 



9 

longed research, this saturation of self with facts, after 
having gone through these long mental processes, often 
fraught with serious misgivings, that the historian is 
prepared to put pen to paper and try to reveal to others 
that which the past has revealed to him. In writing 
he seeks to tell the story in such a way that his readers 
will become convinced without being aware that they 
are being argued with. In his statements he must be 
careful not to arouse opposition, but to produce the 
efTect he desires by the employment of lights and shadows 
precisely as does the artist. He must weigh every 
sentence, nearly every word, with a view to euphony, 
to form, and even to grammar. In all this, he must 
put his own soul into his work and let it shine forth. 
The labor and risk involved in producing even a small 
piece of historical writing is very great. Sometimes, 
the author feels that it would be advisable to stop. It 
is absolutely impossible to write a definitive history. 
Every historian misses or has not access to many, many 
facts and papers. At any moment a document may 
come to Ught to destroy all statements as to some one 
fact or series of facts; the next historical writer must 
revise the dicta of centuries. An author is always 
prejudiced by his environment; he is limited by the span 
of hmnan existence. He must therefore apportion his 
time so that his chosen task stands a fair chance of 
accomplishment. Nor can he be blamed for closing 
his research and beginning the arrangement of his facts, 
for there is scarcely a field within the purview of the 
writer on American history that would not yield to 
research, if carried on for many, many years, or indefi- 
nitely. The time comes when the historian must begin 
to inake up his mind. In doing this it is not at all 
necessary that he should have read every bit of evidence. 
Take the countless diaries and journals of the blockade 
of Boston, or simply those dealing with Bunker Hill; 
there are differences between them, no doubt, but in 
essentials they teach the same truths. These will be 
patent to the man of historical genius when he has read 



10 

three or four of them, and will never become visible to 
him whose mind works in another way, no matter how 
many he may read. 

In looking about for writers of history in this country 
at the present moment, the seeker is met with greater 
discouragement than would befall him in almost any 
other path of original research. The American people 
are in the midst of a cycle of commercialism. There 
has not been a time for many years, at any rate, when 
scholarship has been so hghtly valued in the United 
States as it is at the present moment. In talking with 
students, in viewing the books that are printed, one is 
driven to this conclusion, lamentable though it is. 
Scholarship is momentarily at a very low ebb, because 
it is not valued throughout the country at large. Now- 
adays the size of the output and not the quality of the 
production is what attracts attention. The standard- 
ization of education, not the making of scholars, is the 
cry. Let anyone turn the matter over in his own mind 
and see if he cannot count the really first-class works 
of American historical writers within the last twenty- 
five years, on his fingers ; and yet conceive of the num- 
ber of persons engaged in historical pursuits and the 
number of books constantly published under the guise 
of history! Some day the wheel will turn around; 
scholarship will again be valued as a national asset; 
and a new Parkman will arise! Possibly, he may 
produce only one volume, but if that volume shall be 
of the quality of the "Pioneers of France," it will do 
more for the cause of educating the plain people and the 
building up of his own reputation than the printing 
of documents by the ton or the publication of mono- 
graphs by the dozen. 










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